


hell halfway twixt now and then

by elijah_was_a_prophet



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2005-2006 NHL Season, Faustian Bargain, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:14:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22609606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elijah_was_a_prophet/pseuds/elijah_was_a_prophet
Summary: Cursebreaking comes at a price.
Relationships: Sidney Crosby/Marc-Andre Fleury
Comments: 9
Kudos: 41
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	hell halfway twixt now and then

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lavenderjacquard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderjacquard/gifts).

> Thanks to Meatball42 for cheerleading, beta reading, and plot unfucking!

“I won’t give up my soul,” Flower told the Devil. “Or my firstborn.”

“You don’t have much else that’s worth my time.”

“First love.”

The Devil grinned. Hot cinders dropped from the end of his cigar. “You don’t think you and that girl counted? Interesting. But I’ll take it. Your first true love to lift the curse Jaromír Jágr left with the Penguins.”

Flower took the offered razor and split his thumb, letting a stream of blood fall onto the blank paper before him. The Devil signed his name in black ink underneath, and the contract was made.

“It’ll take time before you see a change,” the Devil said. “Jágr had ten years for his curse to seep into Pittsburgh.”

“Why’d he do it?”

“He didn’t curse you, he carries a curse. As long as he plays, he will never find a home. Your trade is much kinder.”

Privately Flower didn’t agree, but one didn’t argue with the Devil. It was uncouth.

That year they had Sidney Crosby with them. He played like the teenage wunderkind he was, and Flower took the opportunity to annoy him using classic tactics like tape on the skates and unscrewing his water bottle lid so he’d drench himself.

“What did I do to you!” Sid yelled after getting a towel of shaving cream to the face.

“Be my teammate.”

Sid looked betrayed enough that Flower felt a little bad, or at least until he discovered his underwear taped to the ceiling and had to knock it down with a stick while everyone else laughed their asses off.

They lost Lemieux in the New Year, and the locker room throbbed with whispers about curses. Odelein’s knee, Thibault’s hip, and now Lemieux’s heart. When Sid was given the “A” Flower could see teammates crossing themselves and whispering Our Fathers.

“Do you say the rosary?” LeClair asked Flower before they hit the ice against Ottawa.

“No.”

“You should. Helps keep the Devil off your back.”

Flower laughed in his face before sitting in the crease and making forty-one saves. They still lost 5-2, and in the locker room afterwards there was the low murmur of _lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil_.

“I know curses,” LeClair protested in the showers. “I was with the Canadiens. Saint Patrick hasn’t let go of us yet.”

“Curse hasn’t bothered me yet.”

“Curses-”

“Just mean a team is in a slump,” Recchi said. “It wasn’t Jágr, or Roy, or fucking Billy Penn who’s ever kept a team from wining the Stanley. They just weren’t good enough.”

Someone muttered a ‘hear, hear’, but in the steam Flower couldn’t see who it was. Instead he found his pants (stuffed under the sink, fuck Crosby) and left. They played the Bruins later that week and lost 3-1 and someone tried to light incense on the bus, which gave Flower a headache. 

“Do you think the curse is real?” Sid asked the day after they lost to the Senators again, 4-3 and a home game. He was bored at the Lemieux’s and Flower was one of the few people willing to tolerate his neuroticism.

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t pray out the Devil.”

“I have nothing to fear from him.”

“You didn’t.” Sid rolled off his bed to stare Flower down. “Nobody makes deals with the Devil and wins.”

“I told him what I do and don’t trade. We came to an agreement. And it’s my fucking business.”

Sid still looked distressed, and Flower suddenly remembered all the things they’d said in juniors that the Devil could do to players who made unwise trades. Coaches there said the Devil would make you puck-blind, turn your inner ears to mush so you couldn’t skate right and tear the delicate cartilage in your joints so you’d never play again. Bargain your life and you might die quickly in a car accident or fall, bargain your health and the Devil would give you a slow death like cirrhosis or leukemia. Flower knew all that when he signed the deal, and it was why he’d bargained love instead of flesh.

He hugged Sid and scratched his back. “We already made the trade. I’ve been fine ever since.”

“What’d you give?”

“Nothing I’d miss.”

There was a rosary that hung around Sid’s neck that he took off before kissing Flower, like it was supposed to be that easy. Like things were ever that simple.

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“I wouldn’t.”

Flower kissed him back and felt the Devil’s cold fingers down his spine. He tangled his fingers in Sid’s hair and tried to pull away from the chill he felt. It felt wrong, like the betrayal of Judas. Sid’s teeth were at Flower’s neck, nipping the skin beneath his gold chain, and Flower wished they’d dig deeper.

“I want to blow you.”

“I’m not going to say no to that,” Flower said, and unbuttoned his pants.

Sid seemed much less fumbly than Flower remembered being. But 15 and terrified of everything from a creak in the hallway to his own want was different than 18 and knowing you were one of the best in the league, to the point where they’d drawn lots for you. The Penguins had chosen Flower specifically. They’d won Sid, like he was the pool in poker and they had a royal flush.

“Don’t pull my hair,” Sid said.

“Sorry.”

Flower titled his head back to watch the ceiling fan. The Devil buzzed in his mind, like the ringing in your ears after getting hit with a puck.

“You look good,” he told Sid. “So fucking good. You ever sucked dick before?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

“I read about it.”

They fell silent after that. Occasionally Flower groaned from the bottom of his chest, but otherwise there was only the noise of the air conditioner and Sid’s mouth.

Sid spat out a mouthful of cum in his hand and wiped it on his shirt. “Gross.”

“I like it.” Flower pulled Sid onto the bed next to him and licked the inside of his mouth. In his endorphin haze the buzzing seemed louder. It was like his skull was filled with flies.

The sound stayed with him while he blew Sid, while he ate dinner with the Lemeiuxs, while he jacked Sid off in the shower because being 18 and insatiable was a curse it should have been illegal to bear alone. He pretended to sleep in Sid’s blue-sheeted bed and watched the ceiling fan make drunk slow circles.

“You’re going to love him,” the Devil said from the nightstand. In his hand was a cigar, which he lit with a flick of his fingers. “Even if you don’t think so now.”

Sid was solidly asleep and drooling on Flower’s shirt. Crumbles of ash fell on the back of his hand and Flower brushed them away, knowing the Devil was watching. “So what?”

“You won’t get to keep him.”

They spent the rest of the season sneaking into each other’s rooms. Flower let Sid fuck him, rode him into the mattress while biting the heel of his hand to stay silent. In public they didn’t touch.

The Penguins lost the last game of the season to the Leafs, a final fuck you in a miserable slog of a season that’d seen a ten game losing streak and half their veteran players injured for life. Flower had gotten thrown in after Caron let in five goals, and then Sid got a goal in that immediately started a fight.

“You looked good,” he whispered to Sid on the bus to their hotel. “So fucking good.”

“Not here.” Sid pressed his thumb to the bruise on the inside of Flower’s arm. “We have to talk at the hotel.”

They sat on their opposite beds and faced each other. Sid had his knees drawn up underneath his chin like a child, face in his hands and eyes on the floor. The clock in the corner ticked. The invisible cloud of flies buzzed around Flower’s head as he watched and breathed.

“We have to stop,” Sid mumbled, and there it was. “I can’t be this worried all the time about getting caught. People already don’t like me. I can’t be the first gay hockey player on top of everything else.”

I’m here too, Flower wanted to say. We could do it together. But he knew that you could choose to be out, or you could choose to have a hockey career, and hockey was all Sid knew.

“I understand.”

In the corner sat the Devil. Sid’s hands were in his hair, his shoulders shaking. The Devil set the contract alight and used it to light his cigar. Flower reached out to touch Sid, but dropped his hand halfway and sighed.

“I’m sorry,” they both said, and laid down so they could pretend to sleep.


End file.
